Document management has been of keen interest in almost all business endeavors. Hardcopy documents form the backbone of essentially all record keeping systems and record keeping is per se critical in the effective management of all office activities. Hardcopy documents--otherwise known as the paper trail--reflect the retained memory of the passing business activity and are used for both ongoing business practices and archival purposes.
Hardcopy or paper information storage takes advantage of the fact that paper is an extremely inexpensive memory medium--costing a fraction of a cent for each kilobyte of information stored (in binary terms). However, there are important drawbacks to using paper as a storage medium. From a space standpoint, paper can comprise a surprisingly large space. Typical office filing cabinets can approach twenty to thirty percent of usable floor space in an office environment. This floor space may be quite expensive in terms of rental and other fixed expenses. It also may represent an appreciable lost opportunity cost as the space might be more efficiently employed for other purposes.
Another important weakness in hardcopy document information storage lies in the fact that paper records are not easily searched. This is particularly true when the database of records grows to include many years of recorded business activity--a process typical of almost all business activity. The only feasible searching technique available for hardcopy document records relies on the creation of separate indices and the consistent filing of records in accordance with pre-defined categories. The use of separate indices allows some manual searching of the database, but is prone to filing errors that may defeat the search logic. Moreover, once a particular record is located, it must be physically removed from the system to be used. This creates the potential for misfiling upon re-entry of the record to the system and further only a single user may access the record at a time.
The advent of computer-based storage and retrieval has offered some attractive alternatives to hardcopy record keeping. Computers utilize binary coding regimens to store the information normally found on paper documents with nonvolatile storage of the coded information via magnetic tape, disk, or optical disk data retention. Indeed, the current price--capacity of electronic storage has been dropping substantially over the past two decades. Although still expensive in comparison to paper data storage, electronic storage offers many benefits--not the least of which is the preservation of natural (wood fiber source) resources otherwise consumed in paper manufacture. Other important advantages with electronic document storage includes the use of powerful searching tools to gain rapid access to the stored data and the mutual access to the data by concurrent users of the system.
These advantages of electronic storage have of course been well known within business management. And to some extent, businesses have been switching to electronic document storage on some very limited scale. However, the use of document record keeping, via electronic storage, has largely been limited to the fringes--sporadic and not well structured. Even after two decades of examination, large scale document management by electronic means--the paperless office--remains an elusive dream. In some ways, this is not surprising as the practices of many generations are difficult to change. Indeed, the true cause for a failure in document advancement has been the inability of current systems to coordinate electronic document management in a manner that permits large scale adoption in conventional business practices.
As such the present invention addresses the problems of the prior art and provides a solution to this long pending issue.